Advice needed for running alone

you describe yourself as someone who was once mediocre. you appear to have forgotten whatever grace was shown you by your faster teammates at that time. find your empathy. mentor those who are where you once were. show some darned humility.

you can't actually be any good if this is how you talk. there are obvious ways of involving your team. intervals and tempos were never meant to be same speed for everyone. so they don't have to be as fast. but you can spot teammates a head start and chase.

the way we did fartleks was basically everyone weaving in and out of each other in a patch of field or woods. again, who cares what relative speed you have if you're just all running around the woods or a field area in different directions.

easy runs you're going slow and it's team fun. are you seriously That Guy who can't stay slow with his teammates? even our star runner who didn't like going that slow would maintain team spirit by briefly running off ahead then circling back to us.

that and 1 man isn't a XC team or do you not understand the scoring. invest in your teammates. when i look back at college a mistake i made was doing my side work alone and not figuring out a way to get more of the team doing my kind of supplemental work. you can't win it alone. i was waiting on the coach to recruit an improved team instead of mentoring existing teammates so much.

You seem to have misunderstood this.

first off: I want to run with my teammates. Summer training takes place on a flat trail, and our coach bikes next to us on the run. Everyday I start the run with my teammates, but my coach yells at me until I speed up and am running alone. His mind seems to be set on me running alone

second: I don’t think you understand the gap between me and my teammates. Most of our team last year was seniors. My 5k pr is over 3 minutes faster than the next best person on the team. All of the people I ran with graduated.

and trust me, I do everything I can to help the team. I run extra reps of workouts to help others finish on pace

the person specifically said they were much faster than the team, does it make sense for a 15:00 5k runner to be going on their easy runs with an 19:00 5k runner all the time? No, it doesn’t. Not that it can’t be done some but it’s not always practical and taking your easy days easy is good, taking your easy days at a (relatively) much slower pace isn’t, then it turns into 15 min 5k er is basically walking while 19 min 5ker is on an easy run. That’s because everyone has different easy paces, an easy run isn’t just a run for the fun of it, it’s still supposed to provide aerobic benefit which can’t be done as effectively if not done at the optimal pace (ex: much slower than they need to be going) again not that easy runs needs to be perfectly paced but I wouldn’t run 10:00 miles and call it an easy run I would barely call it a run because it doesn’t challenge me enough as to where it’s easy but not feeling like I’m walking

And let’s say they did run with their much slower teammates for say half of their practices; well what are they going to do the other practices (not even including the tempos or long runs) well they still have the other half to run ALONE, which is the entire point of this post, which turned into a “you should be more humble” rant. Also yea it’s a team sport, but up to a point, you can win a race as a person and lose as a team, the whole idea that “the team is the most important thing to success” is a lot more relevant with a individuals close together in speed, for pack running and other, which in this case the team is the most important thing to getting better for this person, but unfortunately they don’t have a team they can RUN with, which is why this is a question in the first place and trying to find the best solution to it

i think he wanted to just backpat himself or excuse his arrogance. i don't think it has a thing to do with relative speed within a workout. i explained how you can do workouts adjusting for speed, eg, give them a head start on intervals, do fartleks where you share space but not speed, or either run as slow as they do on easy days or circle back. if you aren't interested in such techniques then you're just trolling or venting, not sincerely asking for help.

i do not buy whatsoever that easy days for good runners have to be fast(er). we'd warm up as a group in HS and college. we were not all the same speed. we did fine.

i don't think anyone sincerely gets worked up about how past a point in the intervals, a certain distance or repeats, that the group spreads out. i explained how if he cared what he does is spot them 30 seconds or so and chase.

if he needs competition then he can't wish or sh*t talk it into existence. he needs to invest in his teammates and hope one evolves.

to be crystal clear, what i got from his post is he is training alone this summer. which if i was being treated arrogantly or sh*t talked, i would let him keep doing. i got to run with the best runners on my HS and college teams precisely because they were not all up their own a$$ about their relative prowess, and wanted the gang to be buddies and have fun. and the good ones were still successful.

and the good guys i was running with were like 4:12 types not whatever this half-baked kid is. and they wanted team spirit and we were all buddies who carpooled to school together, did our offseason together, played pickup hoops in the offseason, did road races together.

you either care about the group or think you are above it. if you think you are above it odds are they don't want to work out with you in the summer. and you have a nothing XC team in the fall. bravo, you're "great." maybe a D3 recruits you.